“Most of the real vitriol is for the people who were in the film. They’ve received threats of physical harm, threats of having their homes taken away, threats of being forced into bankruptcy. They’re being followed by private eyes and surveilled.”

Republican-controlled House of Representatives and US Senate went on record this week approving budget resolutions that would eviscerate basic social programs on which tens of millions of elderly, poor and sick Americans depend.

…the cuts proposed are far beyond anything ever enacted by an American government: $5.5 trillion over 10 years in the House budget, $5.1 trillion over 10 years in the Senate budget. Pell grants, job training and housing programs are all targeted. But the biggest cuts come in so-called entitlement programs, including Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps.

They’ve opted for a strategy of open evil. Cuts to the infinite war budgets are nowhere in sight. The collapse of America seems assured at this rate, a society of ignorant, hate-filled, mindless, sick and desperate imperial killers.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

…And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.